Guppy Postmortem

[Vaibhav Pandey]

Greetings fish experts. i love to learn from the forum.

i had this female die on me today, but i am not able to figure out the diagnosis. and i think you guys can help.

female was very young, kept with just one male.

two days back, i had moved both of the fishes to a bowl because i was adding more plants in my 6 gallon low tech. The fishes were subjected to stress, but seemed fine. 

 

maybe, She was trying to give birth but, something happened?

 

or some microorganism might have come from the plants, as i did not qurantine the plants (cause the male is acting sluggish and refusing to eat)

 

 

the female had a yellow spot on her belly. Please ignore the cut fin, its due to the tweezers.

 

should i be worried ,or are these just natural?

 

 

This is the other side. notice the black spot on the belly.this hints me, she died giving birth.

 

i have no idea, if i should be worried about my male guppy or if that was a one time thing.

i cannot afford water test Kits in my area.i am sorry. i had not changed water after putting the plants, it was the same regular water which is changed 30% once a week.

Here is the male.these two were the only fish in the tank.

i am not able to see what went wrong in my husbandry. i am not able to diagnose why did the fish die. and hence am seeking your help.

 

Thank you so much.

Vaibhav

age16 yrs,  from India.

[Vaibhav Pandey]

Update, and further questions.

The male died 4 hours later. So I am pretty sure I am not dealing with some DNA/inherited problem.

 

So here's what I think 

1) it may be flukes from the new plants, as they were shipped from a cheap place and I did not quraintne em properly(just did an alum bath for 2hrs)

2)stress from moving? 

3) chlorine poisoning? Female had the yellow stuff on the belly 

4) ammonia poisoning. There might be an ammonia spike? Please see the snails pic attached.

Q3)is overdosing dry ferts(NPK powder) the reason. Since I had added so many plants, I had started to increase my dry fert dosage.can that cause a problem?

 

Here are the pics of the male.

Not being able to solve a problem presents a great challenge and learning opportunity in the hobby and in life. I wish to get the bottom of this.

 

Here are a few questions which if answered will help me Google better and save me tons of time.

 

Q1)  if these are flukes and I want to treat the planted tank for flukes, then will keeping the tank fish less,but with snails for a month without any treatment help?

 

Q2)can fish flukes affect humans?

That's it for now.

Thanking you in advance

Vaibhav Pandey.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Colu]

What are your water parameters when you move them to a bowl did it have a air stone or sponge in the bowl

[Vaibhav Pandey]

4 hours ago, Colu said:

What are your water parameters when you move them to a bowl did it have a air stone or sponge in the bowl

The fish were moved in my Ramshorn snail growout bowl. It's a medium sized oven container. It gets 100% watercolumn change daily without fail, (substrate has good bacteria).

The fish were there in the bowl for 4 hrs.

They looked fine when I put them back in the tank though.

 

Here is a picture of the bowl.

 

Thank you for looking into the issue.

Vaibhav

 

 

 

 

 

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

Vaibhav, I'm sorry to hear about your guppies. I understand you cannot buy a water test kit- that's unfortunate because it will be a missing piece to your mystery here. Since the only change for your guppies was exposure to new plants and a move the only things we can conclude really is either guppy Stress, AND/OR flukes as you say the plants were not quarantined and there is risk there of exposing fish to flukes or other parasites. When a fish is stressed they are even more prone to disease and illness. I found a website that lists several different diseases/illnesses, I hope you are able to click the link. Nothing else I found addresses the yellow belly on your female- though I did see other forums where a yellow belly on other kinds of fish were mentioned- no conclusions were made there though. 

https://guppyexpert.com/guppy-diseases-parasites-remedies/

[Vaibhav Pandey]

20 hours ago, xXInkedPhoenixX said:

Vaibhav, I'm sorry to hear about your guppies. I understand you cannot buy a water test kit- that's unfortunate because it will be a missing piece to your mystery here. Since the only change for your guppies was exposure to new plants and a move the only things we can conclude really is either guppy Stress, AND/OR flukes as you say the plants were not quarantined and there is risk there of exposing fish to flukes or other parasites. When a fish is stressed they are even more prone to disease and illness. I found a website that lists several different diseases/illnesses, I hope you are able to click the link. Nothing else I found addresses the yellow belly on your female- though I did see other forums where a yellow belly on other kinds of fish were mentioned- no conclusions were made there though. 

https://guppyexpert.com/guppy-diseases-parasites-remedies/

thank you so much for replying!

not having a water test kit is a bummer I did however make a workaround for that. here we have a raw Chemicals for very cheap, i had looked up the procedure to make basic nitrate and ammonia test solutions, and doing so is very easy for me. But our school labs are closed down. Just wanted to say water testing is important, and i will be able to post my parameters in the future.

here in India you can either buy a good water test kit like an API master or you can set up a 3 gallon aquarium from scratch for the same price. (rs: 3000)

 cheap test strips are either not available or are from local brands that are very not reliable.

 

For the fish, i got a lot of help from your side. I learnt about protozoan from the article. and my snail bowl  is filled with them! i could tell you what type they are, but i dont have acces to a microscope. 

The fish were in the bowl for 4 hours, and were stressed,  so various factors might have caused such a quick death

the plants were emmersed grown, but i will still treat the tank for flukes, just in case. 

next time i will not make such mistakes.

 

lessons learnt

1) always qurantine and treat new fish and plants.

2) take fish stress into account when doing work, even for hardy fish.

3) Dose ferts in moderation

4) test  water, it will save a lot of guesswork

Thank you phoenix 

And thank you care forum.

 

Edited April 20, 2021 by Vaibhav Pandey
I was not finished typing

[xXInkedPhoenixX]

You are very welcome, glad I could help. 🙂